Sweden is “in the midst of perhaps the biggest change in modern history for the Correctional Service,” director Martin Holmgren told Ekots.
If that scenario becomes a reality, this country would become the country in the European Union with the most prisoners per capita.
There are currently 6,000 people in Swedish prisons. But the prisons are already full and the Correctional Service has been entrusted with increasing the capacity because it is expected that more convicts will be sentenced in the coming years.
If all 13 proposals for toughening sentences from the Tido Parties Agreement are implemented in 2022, from double punishment for criminal gangs to the abolition of parole, the number of prisoners would increase from 6,000 to 35,000. Sweden would go from a country with relatively few prisoners to a country with the highest number of prisoners in the EU.
This is stated in the report of the Penal and Correctional Service submitted to the Government at the end of last year.
“For several years now, we have been in a situation where the entire Penitentiary Service is under pressure due to occupancy, the number of detainees and convicts, and at the same time we are preparing for an even greater expansion,” said Holmgren.
He said he doesn’t think there will be 35,000 prisoners in the next 10 years, but believes 27,000 cells in prisons and detention centers will be enough, which is the reality the authorities are now planning for.
The expansion from 9,000 to 27,000 cells in detention centers and prisons is historic in scale and will require an extremely fast pace of construction, more staff and an increased budget from the current 16 billion Swedish kroner ($1.6 billion) to around 40 billion kroner a year.
One of the proposals that would increase the need for cells is to abolish the current parole system. Parole means that prisoners who behave well are released after serving two-thirds of their sentences. Repeal would mean additional years in prison for the convict, and could mean an increased security risk when incentives for good behavior disappear.
“I think that there can be such risks and I think that it should be taken into account and analyzed in the investigative work,” said Holmgren.
In the new institutions that will be built, prisoners will, as a rule, share a cell.
The Committee against Torture of the Council of Europe, CPT, said that such cells should be at least eight square meters in area, preferably ten square meters. But due to the lack of space, the Correctional Service began to place two prisoners in cells of six square meters each.
